“Six Months Is a Joke”: Carceral Feminism and Penal Populism in the Wake of the Stanford Sexual Assault Case

• DOI: 10.1177/1557085118789782
• Author: Nicholas Chagnon,Nickie D. Phillips
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085118789782

Feminist Criminology

2020, Vol. 15(1) 47 –69

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085118789782

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Article

“Six Months Is a Joke”:

Carceral Feminism and Penal

Populism in the Wake of the

Stanford Sexual Assault Case

Nickie D. Phillips1 and Nicholas Chagnon2

Abstract

This article analyzes coverage of the Stanford, California rape case, using a qualitative

thematic press analysis to demonstrate how “rape culture” and penal populist framing

intersected. Pulling from national newspapers, as well as diverse online fora, we show

how characteristics of the case such as the perceived leniency toward the accused

were featured in rape culture and penal populist narratives. In addition, we document

a counternarrative that critiqued feminism to pit antirape activists against justice

reformers, framing the case as exemplifying a “culture of mass incarceration.” We

discuss the significance of this in the context of broader justice reform.

Keywords

rape culture, penal populism, carceral feminism, media, sex offender policy, feminist

criminology

Introduction

The Stanford sexual assault case occurred in 2015, at a time of heightened public

attention toward campus sexual assault. A year earlier, the Obama administration had

convened the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, and

antirape activists were organizing on campuses across the country. By this time, stu-

dent organizations were working to raise awareness around the mishandling of reported

incidents, persistent victim-blaming, and high rates of underreporting, patterns often

described as symptomatic of “rape culture” (Grigoriadis, 2017; Kaukinen, Miller, &

Powers, 2017; Phillips, 2016; Wade, 2017; FAQs, n.d.; “Title IX,” n.d.; White House,

1St. Francis College, NY, USA

2University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Nicholas Chagnon, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.

Email: chagnon@hawaii.edu

789782FCXXXX10.1177/1557085118789782Feminist CriminologyPhillips and Chagnon

research-article2018

48 Feminist Criminology 15(1)

2017). Although initial media coverage of these developments highlighted the perva-

siveness of campus sexual assault, later coverage shifted from the plight of survivors

to a focus on how responses to allegations by school administrators unfairly affect the

accused (Kaukinen et al., 2017; Kipnis, 2017; Phillips, 2016; Shibley, 2016). In fact,

some have argued that the criminal justice system—the venue in which the Stanford

case was processed—is preferable for adjudicating cases of campus sexual assault

(Johnson & Taylor, 2017). It was during this time of a transitioning media narrative—a

move away from widespread acknowledgment of the problem of sexual assault on

college campuses to increasing skepticism around enforcement mechanisms focused

on the plight of the accused—that the Stanford case emerged as a national news story.

In the current study, we examine media coverage of the Stanford sexual assault

case. We identify culturally salient discourses applied to the case and discuss implica-

tions for public policy. We argue that while much of the media coverage focused on

the perceived leniency of Turner’s sentence, there were other aspects of the case that

sparked attention. In what follows, we demonstrate how coverage of the case rein-

forced the assertion that we live in a “rape culture”—broadly, the idea that sexual

violence is implicitly, if not explicitly, condoned in contemporary society. For exam-

ple, Turner’s status as an accomplished athlete, his class position, and racial privilege

were believed to contribute to the perceived lenient sentence rendered by the judge.

We found that various commentators emphasized how these factors converged in

ways that softened the criminal justice response with rhetoric characteristic of penal

populism (Pratt, 2006). However, we also detail a counternarrative focused on how

the case exemplified our “culture of mass incarceration,” that cautioned against the

overreliance on incarceration as a solution to the problem of sexual assault. This nar-

rative brought attention to the social harms of lengthy prison terms and draconian

postconviction punishments of sex offenders. In the process, a contradictory, if not

simplistic, framework emerged that pitted anti-“rape culture” activists against crimi-

nal justice reformers, and obfuscated the ways that in seeking justice, both interests

may intersect.

The Stanford Case in Brief

In January 2015, two Swedish graduate students spotted a young man (later identified

as Stanford University student Brock Turner, 19 years old) assaulting who appeared to

be an unconscious woman behind a dumpster outside of a fraternity house. As the

students approached, Turner ran, and the two chased him and held him down until

police arrived. According to the court documents, the victim was unconscious, “breath-

ing, but completely unresponsive” (Rocha & Mejia, 2016). The police report described

Turner as having “disheveled” pants and “what appeared to be a cylindrical bulge

consistent with an erect penis underneath his pants.” The report indicated that the vic-

tim’s dress was pulled up and her vagina and buttocks were exposed, her dress was

covered in pine needles, and her underwear was found “wadded up approximately six

inches from her stomach.” Her sweatshirt was half-removed over her shoulder and part

of her bra exposed. One witness stated that Turner was pointing a cell phone with a